SINITTA knows how to make an impression. Remember on The X Factor how she turned up at judge Simon Cowell’s house wearing nowt but some strategically placed palm leaves? And there she was at the weekend launching her first single in more than 20 years at the Pride In London festival wearing a bikini surrounded by scantily-clad macho men.

No doubt she’ll be treating spectators at this month’s Newcastle Pride celebrations to a similarly eye-catching performance during the three-day festival that also features Faye Tozer from Steps and Shayne Ward among the performers.

She can’t recall being visiting Newcastle for many years but her return will be nostalgic, taking her back to her early success when she was both Simon Cowell’s and Fanfare Records’ first signing.

“Back in the day what Simon and I used to do was get in the car and do Northern radio stations and PAs in clubs, and work our way back home,” she says.

Sinitta was the ninth most successful female artist in the 1980s with a strong of hits including So Macho, Feels Like The First Time, Toy Boy and Right Back Where We Started From. Now she’s back with So Many Men, So Little Time – a song that was a club chart hit for her singer mother Miquel Brown back in 1982.

She didn’t opt out of recording deliberately.

“Things just came to a natural end in the early 1990s. Then I got back into theatre and doing other things in show business and TV and then X Factor and mentoring young generation of talent,” she explains.

“My recording career didn’t pick up again but I was always performing all over the world. Now, it was just a simple case of a producer saying why don’t we do a track and I said, ‘yes let’s do it’.

“They had ideas and we had ideas but ended up doing none of that. The single is a tribute to my mother. I’m not really sure how it came about. We just started singing it in the studio. It was nice to be back in that environment and we talked for ages before we got down to doing any work. I took a trip down memory lane talking abut friends and my mum.”

She’s confident the song sounds “very current” as the 1980s music sound has come back again although she feels her new version is a little edgier, has some rap and she’s put her own unique stamp on it. “My mother said I sounded so much like her. I can hear what she means. We have some similar inflections,” she says.

Her mother was an obvious influence on her career as Sinitta grew up backstage and in her dressing room. Through that she has a special affinity with gay audiences.

“Someone asked had I targeted the gay community with my music? But that’s all I knew. Those were the sort of clubs we went to and that was a natural environment for me. When I was old enough that’s where I started going. I found those places more fun. Other places were not as fun or colourful and music wasn’t as good. People would be funny and doing crazy things. It felt more genuine,” she says.

It’s still the same. “I guess I’m just at home there and when you’re at home you have more fun. You can be yourself and know you’re accepted. I know I’m going to have a good time,” she says.

She’ll be back, along with ex-boyfriend Cowell, on the next series of ITV’s The X Factor talent show. She’s been involved for 11 series, maintaining everyone involved are all good friends and passionate about talent and music. “We laugh, genuinely laugh, and have a good time.

You are in a very creative bubble and it feels like the centre of the universe - and you get a great pop star at the end of it,” she says.

New this time is the fact that Cowell has become a father. Sinitta is godmother to his son Eric. Perhaps she’ll be doing some babysitting, I suggest. “I hope that’s not what I’m being brought back for – as a nanny. Not that that would be too much. It would be great fun,” she adds.

Sinitta and Cowell an entertaining double act. Familiarity, it seems, has not bred contempt. “We see each other and start laughing because it’s been going on for 30 years – you still have your childhood sense of humour and laughing at the stupidest things,” she says.

“I can read him like a book. I know him better than I know my own children because I’ve known him longer. I can tell what he’s about to do. I don’t have anyone else I’m close to. You can have biggest argument and want to kill each other, then five minutes later that’s the person you want to tell the happiest things.”

Her own children are showing signs of following in her footsteps. “My daughter Magdelena can’t stop singing Frozen to me. If I hear that song again I think I’m going to jump out the window. Her voice is step and pure. My little boy Zac is more of a dancer,” she says.

Through her online talent company Attinis – that’s Sinitta backwards – she’s working with a new young boy band 5 Daiz whom she reckons as going to take the world by storm – when they’re old enough. “I put them together and have been working with them for a few years.

They’re the next big thing. They sing, they rap, they do everything brilliantly,” she says.

  • The three-day Newcastle Pride is in Town Moor and Times Square from July 18. For more details, including full listings, visit northern-pride.com or follow @ northernprideuk on Twitter.